This month I get to say
good-bye to two of the most enduring characters I’ve ever created. They were
the subject of the first book I wrote for publication, and they remain two of
my favourites. I doubt I’ll ever get to the end of understanding Richard and
Rose.
They
started as totally different characters. I used to read a lot of classical
mystery stories—Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, Albert Campion, Hercule
Poirot, and I wondered about two of the characters, especially after I saw them
brought to life on screen. What would Nick and Nora Charles make of the eighteenth
century?
When
I started researching, I knew I was on to something. The mid-eighteenth century
was a time of change, in legal and social terms. Before then, British society
wouldn’t dream of having a nationwide police force. Sounded too much like a military
state to the average subject of his majesty. But nationwide crimes like
smuggling were devastating the country’s economy and its peace. A force was
needed to combat these huge gangs of criminals, so the novelist and magistrate
Henry Fielding, and later his brother John, instigated the Bow Street Runners.
The
aristocracy kept itself to itself. Many crimes were quietly and efficiently
dealt with in kind, ie the perpetrator would be sent away, or kept under close
confinement. Not often, but dig and there are a few cases of interest.
Occasionally a scandal would open the ways of the aristocracy to the public.
The murder of his valet by Lord Ferrars, the scandal of Elizabeth Chudleigh’s
alleged bigamy and the occasional “kiss and tell” (modern parlance, but the
practice is far older than that) by a spurned lover or servant would expose the
doings of the wealthy and powerful to the rest of the public. Greatly increased
literacy helped spread the news.
So
the setting was right. I created two people. A quiet, unassuming country girl,
and a man from the lower aristocracy, a baron, one with just enough credentials
to get himself invited to the right parties. Someone of unassuming appearance
who could slip in and out of country murder scenes and solve the mystery, like
Hercule Poirot, producing the solution like a rabbit out of a hat.
One
day I’ll write those books.
What
I got was Richard Kerre. Richard is neither lower aristocracy nor unassuming.
He arrived, fully formed, in the courtyard at Hareton Abbey, the run-down house
that is the setting for “Yorkshire,” the first book in the series. I’d spent a
few chapters setting up Rose, and she was going well. She showed more spirit
than I’d thought, but she still came from the gentry class, and from a solid,
comfortable family background. I felt I knew her. Writing in the first person
was a surprise, too. When I tried writing in the third person, it just didn’t
work. Once I met Richard, I knew. If you want to know what happened to those
first chapters, they’re what I view as “establishing shots,” written more to
get a character clear in my mind. They’re probably lurking somewhere on an old
floppy disc, but they don’t belong anywhere else.
Richard
has to be seen closely, by a natural observer like Rose, because when we first
meet him, he is all flash and dash, and pushes people away. Deliberately. He’s
rogered his way through female society because of what they did to him, but now
he’s ready for change. His roaring twenties done, he’s looking for a more solid
connection in life, beginning to regret some of the more vicious acts he
committed. Too bad they’re about to come back and bite him.
I
was wary of making him and out-and-out dandy, but since my early crush on David
Bowie, I’ve had a fascination with androgyny, men and women for that matter not
afraid to reach out and touch their feminine side. In the mid eighteenth
century, men didn’t hide the flamboyant part of their nature behind dark clothes
and restrained behaviour. They cried, they danced, they dressed outrageously,
and they fought to the death, wore swords every day and never backed down from
a challenge. I love that period, and Richard is a man of that period. So
despite my misgivings, Richard became a dandy. He could never be anything else.
I
had to stop writing and re-think the beloved series I’d spent so much time
preparing to write. Richard would not be ignored, and I couldn’t do it. The
instant “coup de foudre” falling in love was his idea, too. I knew what I
wanted to achieve in the coach house scene in “Yorkshire,” but at one point
Richard makes a declaration I considered foolish. But he insisted. He knew what
he wanted. I went back, found many examples of that happening at that stage in
history. For instance, the Duke of Devonshire saw his future wife, Mary, across
a crowded ballroom and knew she was the only woman for him. He had to wait for
her for many years, but eventually he got her.
Richard
wanted Rose with the same intensity and certainty.
Just
when I thought I was on some kind of track, something else happened to stop me.
Gervase. I got to a point I thought was a bit weak, and I’d discovered a plot
knot, something I needed to solve before a reader said, “but why didn’t they
just…?”
I
needed an answer, so I did some “what if…” scenarios. One worked so much better
than all the others and at that point, I had to stop and go back and rewrite
all over again. At the time, it was daring to bring in a major sympathetic
character with this trait. Now, it’s almost compulsory. It explained so much,
rippling over the backstory to make more sense. Why would society behave so
viciously to Gervase as to cast him out until he was so rich anything he did
short of murder didn’t matter? Lots more delicious research, and I was ready to
go for it.
It
worked. What I didn’t realise was that Gervase would get his own fan club, that
people would love him so much they wanted his story.
So,
I was ready. I wrote “Yorkshire,” “Devonshire,” and started on “Venice” before
the writing frenzy gave me enough time to send the manuscript out to a
publisher. I must have been mad.
Publication
Nobody
in the UK was interested in a story so different. They want more of the same
with a twist, and I wasn’t writing the kind of book they wanted. But I had
enough “this is good but we don’t know where to place it” letters to tell me I
was on the right track, somehow. Somewhere was the clue. An agent, in a
rejection letter, said I had something that might appeal to the American
market. We’d just got dial-up at home, and we restricted it rigidly (it was
very expensive at first, but my husband needed it for his job). I found a
couple of writing groups and a list of publishers. The big New York publishers
didn’t want it, same story, too different, first person didn’t sell well,
Regency rather than Georgian, so I tried the brand new epublishing market. I
found NFI West. I was lucky, because just before I signed the contract, a
friend warned me they were about to disintegrate, so I went to NBI instead.
Frying pan, meet fire.
My
first editor rewrote the book. She didn’t just heavily edit it, she rewrote
most of it and suggested I did it in third person. Distressed, wondering if
this was what publication was like, I wrote to the senior editor, who agreed
with me, sacked the original editor, and did the work herself. Something she
said then stayed with me. “We bought your book, not hers.” A lovely
reassurance.
Unfortunately,
after a few years, NBI died when the owner ran away, never to be found to this
day, despite one of the authors, ace PI Linnea Sinclair, bringing her skills to
bear on the case. We formally claimed back our rights, and luckily, the senior
staff at NBI had the authority to do that, before closing the company. Richard
and Rose went on to Mundania, who then had a few setbacks, including the
serious illness of one of the partners, which meant the book’s schedule
disappeared.
By
then I’d sold a book to a new company, Samhain, “Last Chance, My Love.” I
hadn’t realised that my editor there was such a Richard and Rose fan, until she
asked me how the series was doing. Of course, inter company etiquette meant she
couldn’t do anything else, but as it happened, I was in the process of
regaining my rights from Mundania, and when I got them back, I offered them to
Samhain, where Richard and Rose currently have their home. Angie was my editor
until she left the company to helm Carina. She was such a help, and one of the
greatest editors a girl could wish for, helping me polish and hone the books
until they shone. She never imposed her own views, never told me where she
thought the story should go, and let me take my couple where they needed to go.
She’s a great factor in the success of the stories. As is Samhain’s support. They’ve
put “Yorkshire” up for free a couple of times to interest new readers in the
series, and they’ve always believed in what I did, even when I had a
near-breakdown last year wrapping up all the remaining loose ends in “Lisbon.”
The
series ended where I always planned. Along with that vision of Richard,
resplendent and confident in that courtyard in Yorkshire, I saw him in a
specific situation, broken and lost, needing one person to help him fight back.
Rose, of course. I knew where that situation was. I timed the series so it
would end there, and even I didn’t know its ultimate conclusion, if the couple
would live or die, if they’d leave problems behind them, if they’d—I had to
write it to find out.
There
is potential for more stories, and already I have an idea where I’d want them
to start. Not all their enemies are dead, not all are revealed. In 1757, the
country is on the brink of war, Parliament in turmoil and the old King’s health
failing. The heir to the throne is a boy, dominated by a new political faction,
led by his mother’s lover, Lord Bute. If Richard comes into his title then, and
his mother is still eaten up with the way he’s wrested control from her and
given nothing back—she could get vicious.
Or
perhaps I should leave them be.
Anyway,
please enjoy “Lisbon” with all my best wishes. I’ve put the first chapter below
for you.
Next
Who
knows? I don’t. At least, I have an idea.
Welcome
the Emperors of London, a family whose mothers decided to call them after
powerful emperors of the past. Some have won the Emperor lottery, like the
subject of the first book, Alex. Some are relatively fine, like Julius, his
cousin, but some are saddled with the more outlandish names, like poor
Nicephorus.
I’ve
written the first book in the story, Alex’s, but I haven't really started to
query these, so I have no idea where they’ll end up. Alex’s story started as a
character from Richard and Rose. He was originally Freddie, Richard’s closest
friend, but it became obvious something else was happening, so I rewrote it as
a stand alone. It took interesting turns, starting in a modest country house,
transitioning through a London brothel to the highest of society. I wanted to
bring all the excitement of the Georgian age to the page, its follies and even
its more unbelievable aspects, but everything in the story could have happened.
Indeed, it might have happened, since I often take real life incidents and use
them as the basis for fiction.
So
I need to buckle down to the practicalities of writing. Now finally I have to
say goodbye to two of my favourite characters, perhaps it’s time to say hello
to a whole new group.
Thank
you. Just thanks, for being there, for buying the books, for writing me such
lovely letters over the years. I’m not going anywhere.
They can escape winter’s cold, but their nemesis
has a long, icy reach.
Richard and Rose, Book 8
On a ship bound for Portugal with her children and the man she loves, Rose
should be blissfully happy. Except Richard treats her like she’s made of
porcelain. She’s recovered from the childbed fever that nearly killed her, yet
he won’t share her bed and it’s driving her mad.
To win him back body and soul, she resolves to use every wicked, seductive
trick he’s taught her. Until a possible attempted murder on board puts them
both on alert for the trouble that seems to dog their every move.
Richard is almost relieved to have something to investigate. He loves Rose too
much to risk losing her—which is exactly what could happen if he gets her
pregnant again. When it becomes clear a series of accidents is no such thing,
they realize an old enemy has caught up with them.
It’s imperative for Richard and Rose to work together to defeat this foe, but
their new distance could prove their undoing. Especially when Mother Nature
conspires to make them endure one last, desperate test of their love…
Product Warnings
The earth is moving for Richard and Rose, but this
time it’s not entirely their fault.
